200 Jigs Reels and Country Dances
for Piano, Violin, Flute, or Mandolin
publisher: Paull-Pioneer Music Co. New York
date: 1928 ?
source: Irish Cultural Center Library, Canton MA
Irish Traditional Tune Library folder 27
page date: 24 March 2012
TUNE TABLE
ABC tune file
This folio was assembled by the publisher
from material copyrighted in two segments by composer / collector Frank
Harding. The copyright date for "Number 1" (titled "Harding's
Collection of Jigs, Reels, & c."), comprising tunes 1 - 100, was
1891, while the date for "Number 2" ("Harding's Collection of Jigs,
Reels, and Dances"), comprising tunes 101 to 200, was 1897.
A note on the bottom of the first page of music states "Copyright assigned 1928 to Paull-Pioneer Music Co., N.Y.C." (My late father used to work for this company after he got out of the band business in the late 1940's.)
All the tunes are presented with piano accompaniment.
The quality of the material in this folio ranges from excellent to the bizarre - "Harvest Home" and "Haste to the Wedding" are present alongside gems like "Lone Appendicitis" (!!) and "Look Out for the Drip" (I don't want to know), tunes that would be fun to learn just so you drop their names into a session sometime.
The more traditional material is treated with respect, while the composed material is of interest mainly because it involves tune classifications no longer comprehensible to the average traditional musician. Terms like "straight jig" and "eccentric jig" and "burlesque reel" may have made sense back in the days of the vaudeville stage, but most musicians of the present day would probably not have any idea what meaning to assign to them. I haven't checked "The Harvard Dictionary of Music" but I promise to do so and update these notes if I find anything!
To make the situation even more opaque, Harding's key signatures often don't match up with the names or descriptions of the tunes, at least as they would be commonly understood today. Much of the material in the book is in 2/4 time, but a tune so marked can be called a reel or a jig. In fact most of the reels in this book are in 2/4 time, while hornpipes tend to be 4/4!
Of course there is precedent for this mismatch (as we view it) between time signatures and tune names, but one has to wonder about the depth of Mr. Harding's experience with Irish traditional music. Unfortunately there is no information in this volume about either Harding or his sources, and not much seems to be known about him - searching his name came up with a few references to his collections but zero information (at least that I have been able to find) on Harding himself. No Wikipedia page exists for him, and while the Musica Viva website had information about his collections, it had nothing on the man.
The situation with regards to the aforementioned collections is pretty chaotic; evidently the same material was published at different times by different people. I won't attempt to go into detail here except to say that the Paull-Pioneer edition whose cover graces the top of this page is not even included in Musica Viva's list!
It seems fairly obvious that Harding probably thought of himself as a composer first and a collector second, but only a few of the unfamiliar pieces in "the 200" are credited to anyone - if we take "original" as meaning that Harding himself composed a particular piece, and "King" (several references) to another composer in the same quasi- (or pseudo-) classical genre.
It's interesting to speculate as to the reasons for this attempt to "gentrify" (for want of a better word) not only Irish and Scots traditional music, but the music of black Americans as well - for every song about "Molly" or "Nora" there's one about "Mandy" (note that Willie, Rastus, and Ebenezer make their presence felt in "the 200" too). Harding's efforts date from a time when "ethnic" acts appealed to patrons of vaudeville, when George M. Cohan and Harrigan and Hart and Bert Williams (among many others) were all making their mark as important entertainers whose appeal had reached beyond the confirnes of their particular ethnic groups.
Where Frank Harding fits into this mix is anybody's guess: was he a typical Tin Pan Alley type who just happened to have some acquaintance with traditional music? Was he a serious collector who wanted to preserve the traditional tunes that he had encountered in the course of his musical career? Was he an Irish-American? Unfortunately, as of now, we don't know.
On the back page of this edition of "the 200" are blurbs for two other Paull-Pioneer publications, one of which is titled "Emerald Gems - Irish Melodies and Memories of the Ould and New". It's described as "48 pages of quaintness, novelty, and beauty - with new and refreshing arrangements". Among the contents are forgotten gems like "Handful of Earth from My Dear Mother's Grave" and "Throw 'Em Down McCluskey". The cover features one of the ugliest shamrocks I have ever seen.
No editor is mentioned, but how surprised would we be if we were some day to discover that Frank Harding was the man in charge?
- Bill Black
A note on the bottom of the first page of music states "Copyright assigned 1928 to Paull-Pioneer Music Co., N.Y.C." (My late father used to work for this company after he got out of the band business in the late 1940's.)
All the tunes are presented with piano accompaniment.
The quality of the material in this folio ranges from excellent to the bizarre - "Harvest Home" and "Haste to the Wedding" are present alongside gems like "Lone Appendicitis" (!!) and "Look Out for the Drip" (I don't want to know), tunes that would be fun to learn just so you drop their names into a session sometime.
The more traditional material is treated with respect, while the composed material is of interest mainly because it involves tune classifications no longer comprehensible to the average traditional musician. Terms like "straight jig" and "eccentric jig" and "burlesque reel" may have made sense back in the days of the vaudeville stage, but most musicians of the present day would probably not have any idea what meaning to assign to them. I haven't checked "The Harvard Dictionary of Music" but I promise to do so and update these notes if I find anything!
To make the situation even more opaque, Harding's key signatures often don't match up with the names or descriptions of the tunes, at least as they would be commonly understood today. Much of the material in the book is in 2/4 time, but a tune so marked can be called a reel or a jig. In fact most of the reels in this book are in 2/4 time, while hornpipes tend to be 4/4!
Of course there is precedent for this mismatch (as we view it) between time signatures and tune names, but one has to wonder about the depth of Mr. Harding's experience with Irish traditional music. Unfortunately there is no information in this volume about either Harding or his sources, and not much seems to be known about him - searching his name came up with a few references to his collections but zero information (at least that I have been able to find) on Harding himself. No Wikipedia page exists for him, and while the Musica Viva website had information about his collections, it had nothing on the man.
The situation with regards to the aforementioned collections is pretty chaotic; evidently the same material was published at different times by different people. I won't attempt to go into detail here except to say that the Paull-Pioneer edition whose cover graces the top of this page is not even included in Musica Viva's list!
It seems fairly obvious that Harding probably thought of himself as a composer first and a collector second, but only a few of the unfamiliar pieces in "the 200" are credited to anyone - if we take "original" as meaning that Harding himself composed a particular piece, and "King" (several references) to another composer in the same quasi- (or pseudo-) classical genre.
It's interesting to speculate as to the reasons for this attempt to "gentrify" (for want of a better word) not only Irish and Scots traditional music, but the music of black Americans as well - for every song about "Molly" or "Nora" there's one about "Mandy" (note that Willie, Rastus, and Ebenezer make their presence felt in "the 200" too). Harding's efforts date from a time when "ethnic" acts appealed to patrons of vaudeville, when George M. Cohan and Harrigan and Hart and Bert Williams (among many others) were all making their mark as important entertainers whose appeal had reached beyond the confirnes of their particular ethnic groups.
Where Frank Harding fits into this mix is anybody's guess: was he a typical Tin Pan Alley type who just happened to have some acquaintance with traditional music? Was he a serious collector who wanted to preserve the traditional tunes that he had encountered in the course of his musical career? Was he an Irish-American? Unfortunately, as of now, we don't know.
On the back page of this edition of "the 200" are blurbs for two other Paull-Pioneer publications, one of which is titled "Emerald Gems - Irish Melodies and Memories of the Ould and New". It's described as "48 pages of quaintness, novelty, and beauty - with new and refreshing arrangements". Among the contents are forgotten gems like "Handful of Earth from My Dear Mother's Grave" and "Throw 'Em Down McCluskey". The cover features one of the ugliest shamrocks I have ever seen.
No editor is mentioned, but how surprised would we be if we were some day to discover that Frank Harding was the man in charge?
- Bill Black
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